SAN DIEGO READER MOVING TO GOLDEN HILL

The San Diego Reader, San Diego’s largest alternative weekly newspaper, is moving next month to Golden Hill, leaving behind its Little Italy home for a neighborhood its staffers consider more “hip.”

Owner Jim Holman said he’s in escrow for the 17,000-square-foot building at 2323 Broadway at a purchase price of $2 million. It currently houses a tattoo parlor, a ballet studio and the Women’s Museum of California.

Holman said he expects to sell the Reader’s 12,000-square-foot offices at 1703 India St. for even more and has already received several unsolicited offers.

“For some time we realized we weren’t in the right spot,” Holman said, because Little Italy has become a bustling tourist attraction where retail rather than office uses prevail.

While the current location has plenty of parking, he said, the public sends advertisements and news items electronically, so that it is not so important to be in a place with a lot of foot traffic.

The Golden Hill site does not have similar parking spaces but is freeway close, he said, and is near the homes of some of the Reader’s 65 staff members.

“When I moved to San Diego in the early 1970s, everybody was saying Golden Hill was up and coming,” he said. “It never came up, even after 40 years.”

But after touring the building formerly called Carpenter’s Union Hall and the Art Union, Holman said the interior is a big improvement and the surrounding neighborhood is looking up at last.

“It’s kind of like a good time to go,” he said. “All of our staff knows the area and are very excited. They think it’s a really hip place to be. I’m not that much of hip person. But the Reader has that kind of cachet and it makes sense for us to be there.”

Founded in 1972, the Reader moved to a former restaurant space in Little Italy in 1988. The current circulation of the free publication is about 130,000.

Holman said he is in a “holding action” when it comes to staff size and relies more on bloggers and freelance writers than full-time writers.

“You solicit and encourage a great body of people who love writing for the love of it,” he said.